Number 26 to Memphis

                                                               SOLD

The Number 26 train to Memphis
hovers above ladder-tracks
laid down by the indigenous
inside of visions in which they saw themselves
climb each rail across the world.
If you board the Number 26, now,
the conductor will drive you through a state
of abandoned, yet occupied railroad cars
fossilized in mass open graves.

Regarding your luggage:

Tourist -
life already stores inside you
the sands of Memphis,
the gyrations of Elvis
the Libations of Africans,
the base desires in your blues,
the post-Lenten carnivals inherent in your jazz.

Regarding fare dodging, the
Members of The Subterranean Indigenous Tourist Board
wish to tell you this:

scavengers and passengers
must and will pay,
scavengers and passengers
must and will pay.

And, if while sleeping in your sleeping car
a gaggle of horns wakes you,
screaming out in a cacophony of sorrow,
open your door to a procession
led by face masked marauders,
their plastic expressions altered
by fire-light from candles.
Join that army of perversely masked
women and men,
raising back into life
the sarcophagus of the world they carry.

Tracks and Tunnels can then
become the open road for
trains traveling over, under and through
the imaginations of
all cities called and not called Memphis.

The original "Number 26 to Memphis" painting is on sale here.

Formaldehyde Mind Wagon

Formaldehyde Mind Wagon

Calling all Stained Glassed Street Soldiers
Your ancestor's visions are dying with your limited sight.
Challenge Rigor Mortis or Dance with Him.
Your Bacchanal is not a band-aid for burdens
dragging you through carnival beams.
You must encounter the spirits of jump-up
and wear the masks of friends and enemies -
Before this:
Develop an inner vision addiction.

This 8 and 1/2" by 11" original oil pastel, pencil and ink painting is for sale here.

Moons of Lucy

Moons of Lucy

Lucy used to share the sky with diamonds,
lifted by hallucinogens
that cast her in cubic zirconium light.
Lucy, carried on the backs of five white Beatles
singing yesterday as if we'd never catch up with today.
Beatles, black scarabs
That pulled her up further
after she was pulled
from the ground she was pulled from
pulled from her Mother's land
our Mother's land
and we became her faithless children.

So how is it, then, that Lucy used to worship here
millions of millennia ago
centuries ago,
no, decades ago
though she was seen here the day
before yesterday
okay, earlier today
before the sun crawled up the ladder
behind the horizon
and her moon sunk its face
into darkness that looked like water
much like one of those tortured ships -
but these I'll not speak of
I'll not speak of
because Lucy does not wish me to.

The walls of Santa Lucille, now
contain stains and mirrors
indentations made by needles.
Hymns written in fingerprints,
sung by dust.
When the floors of Santa Lucille became
lined with bags of heroine
on top of vials of cracks
the saints devolved into
proselytizers,
prostitutes and erections
drawn on the ceiling with the kind of ink
only Lucy can generate for us in our sleep.

The church began to crumble
when her asbestos bones became brittle
no longer boasting their robust remains
her aliases - illegal alien a/k/a angel-dust
but never ancestor.

Pleading for the Desert (1961)

Pleading for the Desert (1961)

With your sand-pills
plant pricks
and tonic winds
I long to crawl along
your filthy midnights
stare at myself
missing
in mirages and mirrors
chased by casinos
driven by cadillacs,
to have you
travel up your down sandsteps
onto fertile land that's mine.
I long for looking up at
stars from car hoods
realize wrong rituals
bathe my wishes off with water
imported from tenement
buckets and tubs.
Drag myself
along your dryways
ride all of your ripe cacti
'til I empty the flood.


Pleading for the Desert (1961)
from 'Portrait of a Mantrap'
Starring Mathilda 'Tiddy' Rockchester
who likes to cause an entrance before she makes a disturbance - or appearance, rather.

The above words came right off of the liner notes included on Mathilda's 'Tiddy' Rockchester's 4th album, 'Revolution My Ass, Pour me some Rum.' She didn't write this plea as if it were a poem (I took that liberty) she wrote it this way, instead:

"Listen here, Desert-honey:
I long for your sand-pills, plant pricks, and tonic winds. I long to crawl along your filthy midnights, stare at myself missing in mirages and mirrors - chased by casinos, driven by cadillacs, to have you travel up your down sand-steps onto fertile land that's mine." She broke it off here, and included the above picture, whose author, (undoubtedly a beatnik-hippie or a freak of jazz) is unknown.

This album was produced and distributed posthumously by her former manager, Wellington Daniel Waters (aka Wellwater) who branded himself sole proprietor of her estate, after discovering the location of her unmarked grave on a map which provided a most disturbing backdrop (according to Wellwater) to the most vivid dream he had.

Her liner note continued after the picture, with the rest of her plea:
"I long for looking up at stars from car hoods, realize wrong rituals, bathe my wishes off with water, imported from tenement buckets and tubs, then drag myself along your dryways, ride all of your ripe cacti, 'til I empty the flood."

Wellwater swore the note was meant for him but still dedicated the album to Tiddy (as she liked to be called), writing, in his own hand:
'This album is dedicated to the memory of Mathilda 'Tiddy' Rockchester, which does not necessarily mean that the lady is dead. '

After the album's release, Wellwater spent that winter waiting for one conjugal visitation from - at the very least - (according to him) her wicked, wicked soul. When the Spring of 1962 came and Wellwater was forced to realize that though he had aged, he could detect inside of him little growth, he hydrated himself with water, then whiskey and wrote down these lines to the beginning of an account in which he denigrated, then elevated, then denigrated, again, the myth of Mathilda:

'I have always loathed Mathilda - and not because she was ruthless or manipulative or that she sold to the public the image of herself as a prostitute and genius. I loathed Matilda simply because I created her - and though it is no comfort at all that she allowed me to ruin her with every act of my creation, I have been destroying myself ever since."

From 'Portrait of a Mantrap' excerpt #1 by Tiffany Osedra Miller

The Lady Conjures a Lion

(This pastel and ink drawing is for sale at my store on ETSY)

The Lady Conjures a Lion

A lion without
Dorothy or Auntie Em
The scarecrow, tin man or
MGM.
A lion-less lion
Neither boy nor girl
hailing from an orange world.

The lady conjures a lion
the way lions look in other worlds
eroded by other wars
a lion with a staircase for its body
containing earth’s eternity, power and pain.
The lady conjures a lion –
This was not her intent
Yet she embraced its prowess and mystery
Climbed its series of steps
Without Bibles, ballads,
whips or guns
And found herself living in the
Universe of its belly.
Its newest pregnancy
not immaculate
but a consummation
of the lady’s conjuring
and the animal’s openness
in an orange sand desert
beneath the ground underground.

A lion without
Dorothy or Auntie Em
The scarecrow, tin man or MGM
A lion-less lion
Neither boy nor girl
hailing from an orange world.

When the lady conjures a lion
It does not swear or spit
Or come attached to a green and jaded jungle
But joined, instead, to its staircase of pregnancies
Digging deep into an orange ground.
And the lady who conjured the lion
Understands that this is the lion
At its most supernatural,
Un-caged in openness
Its steps suggesting levels.
When the lady conjures a lion
It does not use its mouth to roar
But uses its presence to buzz
In the mouths of lion-less carolers
Who sing into the myth of its patriarchy
Something so maternal
that it exists in dualities
Then multiplicities
And can fly as much as it can run or swim
Or present its belly to us in steps or stages
And we can call it with great pleasure,
‘The best of the beasts.’

A lion without
Dorothy or Auntie Em
The scarecrow, tin man or MGM
A lion-less lion
Neither boy nor girl
hailing from an orange world.